just one of those days

Have you had those days when you feel like you’ve spent it doing battle with a rabid hyena in a NASA wind tunnel? Maybe that example is a bit extreme. What about a whole day trudging through a swamp of maple syrup and bees while a painfully shrill alarm keeps going off every seventh step you take? That’s a more appropriate way to describe my day. 80% of my eighth grade students failed the test we gave them last week, so we planned a lesson to do test corrections. If they don’t retain some knowledge from the previous unit, it’s impossible to continue on to the next. So we worked. My patience was tried as we repeated for the fifth time how to form the sentence: If the weather is nice tomorrow, we will play football outside. But I’m a teacher, and patience is the number one most important personal trait to have. So we explained. Then comes the wonderful thirty minute break between the third and fourth lessons, where the teachers have a chance to drink tea and the students can burn some energy running around in the hall. Recently, however, the school radio club has begun making announcements over the PA during that break, followed by unnecessarily loud techno music. Maybe I’m getting old in my young age, but do we really need techno music blaring in the classrooms where the teachers are trying to drink tea while the kids run wild in the halls? My head is already hurting (my sinus head-cold not helping) when the yelling begins in the hallway. My CP and the other English teacher run out to see what is going on, to find a broken cylindrical portfolio carrier in the hands of a sobbing eighth grade girl. “My mom is gonna KILL me!” The boys had been playing keep away from the girl with her tube and it shattered when one student flung it too far out of the reach of another boy. The judgment from my CP: because she hadn’t seen exactly who broke it, and all the boys involved were denying their involvement, the whole class would need to collect money to replace the broken property. Lots more yelling ensued, mainly from the students who had not been involved. I’ve noticed that people here get worked up pretty easily and tend to raise their voice more often than what I was used to in the States, but today the decibels just kept rising and rising. The lesson began again and I sat watching the class as my CP gave the students new words and translated a text about the Kazakh New Year. The yelling continued as the students became distracted and then disruptive. As the boys in the back began to throw paper at each other and then write on each with permanent markers, I discreetly stood up and walked to the back of the room. I asked one of them in Russian how old he was. He said he was 14. “Really?!” I asked, astonished. “You act like you’re 5.”

Mama said there’d be days like this.
I need a nap.
31 days till Thailand.